Though she didn’t know it then, Sandra Bland recorded the event that would lead to her death. That we are just now learning of the video tells us everything that we need to know about the quality of the investigation and the primary aim of the investigators.
The newly released video tells a story of a proud woman confronting an entitled man displaying all the symptoms of toxic masculinity and who had absolutely no respect for her personhood and only disdain for her womanhood. We see how easily he overcame her attempts to assert herself and her rights. We see how aggressively Brian Encina approached her; that seconds into the encounter he used the threat of violence to secure her compliance — he would “light her up,” he promised while pointing the taser directly in her face. Sandra’s video allows us to see that she didn’t stand a chance. She had no defenses. Her fate was sealed.
And so we are all horrified and appalled anew at how a hopeful young woman on her way to her brand new job was attacked, criminalized, and pushed into an early grave by an out-of-control officer of the law. But I truly believe that the central message of the video is to remind us that there’s work to do. We cannot rest on our laurels. We cannot just be angry and outraged and go back to things as usual. For three years now the human train wreck occupying the White House has done everything in his power to suck up all the oxygen in the joint. We cannot breathe. But while we are allowing ourselves to be distracted and (for some) entertained by his shenanigans — criminal and otherwise — police officers continue to kill and brutalize with impunity.
Take a look at the cases below.
Three black children Shot in the Head
There’s everything wrong with this case. A man suspected of robbing a pizza shop hopped into a vehicle with four black kids. It is unclear whether this was his vehicle or an attempted carjacking. Plainclothes policemen opened fire into the truck claiming that the dude was trying to run them over. There’s a picture of the old beat-up truck in the video below, there’s absolutely no way that they could not have seen the precious occupants in that vehicle.
Police claim they began shooting because Smith was attempting to run them over with his truck, but many dispute this argument, saying officers simply could have moved out of the way rather than opening fire, especially into a vehicle containing children. It should also be noted that officers were in plain clothes that day, meaning Smith very well may not have known the two men approaching him with guns were police.
“If you don’t know if someone is law enforcement or not, it changes things,”
said family attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons according to TFTP. “I don’t know what happened, but that’s concerning to me.”
Dude is suspected of robbing a pizza shop. I can understand (a little) if the owners of the business had a gun and busted a shot at him, but why is it ok for cops — plainclothes cops, at that — to want to kill him when he’s running away from them? They had him cornered, they saw the children, and yet they still emptied their guns in the truck. Black children lives are precious, too.
Cop body-slammed young black woman
The cops determined that some black people were driving with expired tags, thus they had a decision to make. Should we give them a ticket? Or should we impound their car? Ah, but there’s no decision to make! Of course, we are going to make their lives as difficult as we can! Because that’s our job!
And so, an expired tag leads to a big burly law enforcement officer lifting a young woman off her feet and body-slamming her face down onto the sidewalk. The videos below tell the story.
Cherish’s sister, detained in the backseat of the cop car, panicking as she watches cops manhandling her mom:
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Full disclosure: I was once stopped for driving with expired tags. Two white cops stopped me, approached the window, told me that I had expired tags, and asked for my DL. When I asked in a rather cold and hostile voice why they had run my license plates in the first place they politely told me that they were trained to do so and that they do it all the time. They didn’t ask me to leave the car and they didn’t impound it. They gave me a ticket, told me how much time I had to take care of the problem, wished me a nice day, and took off.
Cop shoots 14-yr despite his suspicion that the gun was fake
“I think it’s a cap gun,” Sergeant Kyle Holcomb says in a video released by victim Lorenzo Clerkley Jr’s lawyer on Tuesday, “but they are shooting something off.”
Lorenzo was shot twice, once in the hip and once in the leg, by the officer on March 10 in Oklahoma City after Sgt Holcomb responded to a call regarding an abandoned house. Lorenzo and friends were at the home shooting airsoft guns.
When Sgt Holcomb approached the house, peering through a hole in the home’s fence, he shot at Lorenzo seconds after giving a warning.
An Ally in spirit and in truth
This young white student gets it. He understands that to be an ally means that you have to be willing to sacrifice; that if your friend is in danger, then you must be prepared to use your privilege on his behalf. Look at the video below and notice how the cop did not touch the white boy even as he [cop] was prepared to choke the living daylights out of the black student. I have to admit that I teared up a little the first time I watched this. The anger, the righteousness, the passion from this young man gives me hope.
We have work to do. Thank you for the reminder, Sandra. Rest in Power.